IDEA FOR NEW SCULPTURE OUTSIDE PLANETARIUM WAS SET IN STONEHENGE

William Mullen, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The mammoth sculpture's 60 stone pieces are placed in a spiral pattern to resemble a galaxy like our own Milky Way. And cutting through the stones are four open avenues precisely positioned to mark points on the horizon where the sun will rise and set each year on the days of the summer and winter solstices.

The summer solstice on Monday will be the first such celestial event since the sculpture at the Adler Planetarium was dedicated last Friday, a primeval stone structure exuding mystery much like England's Stonehenge, stretching 60 feet across the south lawn.

As a piece of public sculpture, it might not quite capture the immediate attention 300 whimsically painted fiberglass cows commanded last week as they were distributed along downtown streets and plazas.

But the cows are here only through October. The planetarium sculpture, created by Brazilian artists Ary Perez and Denise Milan, a husband and wife team, presumably will be around to be admired for generations.

Milan and Perez designed the sculpture to be viewed in many different ways. At first glance, it most resembles a meditative Zen rock garden, but the solstice should reveal its more cosmic references. It was installed next to the planetarium during the winter solstice Dec. 23 under the direction of Adler archeoastronomer Phyllis Pitluga.

The solstices are the longest (summer) and shortest (winter) days of the year.

"I saw a picture of the sculpture last year," said Pitluga, who specializes in studying how prehistoric people and people from non-western cultures look at the sky, "and all I could think of was Stonehenge.

"The artists created the piece specifically so that people could change the placement of the stones in any way they wanted. It is remarkable how much symbolism can be read into this simple, basic design."

Of the 60 stones, rough-hewn on the sides, polished smooth on the top, 56 resemble slightly curved benches in height, width and depth. When arranged in a circle, they decrease in height toward the center, so that the arrangement suggests being in an amphitheater.

At the heart of the circle is a flat-topped hemisphere of snowy white marble, neatly sectioned in four quarters, suggesting a stage, an altar or, for the purposes of the spiral, the center of a galaxy.

"I had the spaces between the quartered sections of the centerpiece aligned like a compass, pointing exactly north, south, east and west," said Pitluga. "And I wanted the four avenues running through the spiral to suggest a prehistoric celestial observatory, like Stonehenge."

Pitluga studies the archeological remains of hundreds of non-telescopic observatories used by prehistoric and preliterate cultures, found in every corner of the world. Stonehenge, for example, represents many decades of careful solar and lunar observation by non-literate scholars 5,000 years ago. The stark, circular stone structure they used to mark out celestial movements took hundreds of years to construct.

Most such ancient observatories are smaller than Stonehenge. Some are far larger and more elaborate, like the Mayan observatory Chichen Itza in Mexico and the Nazca lines, animal figures and plazas inscribed in a desert in southern Peru, used to line up and observe solar and lunar stages.

"I like that we can use this to suggest something as big as the cosmos and at the same time inject the human scale and element into it," said Pitluga. "Those old observatories show us that people throughout time have always looked up at the sky and asked the same questions we are asking today: Where did we come from? Are we alone in the universe?"

The sculpture is spread across a lawn planted atop new lakeside landfill created to support the planetarium's recently completed addition. Though the sculpture was installed in December, city and Adler officials wanted to give the big stones a chance to settle before dedicating it.

It is the second installation of the sculpture. In May 1998, it was placed on exhibit north of the Art Institute in Grant Park on a lawn now removed for construction of Millennium Park.

At the Grant Park site, the sculpture was arranged in a different configuration of three concentric circles around the white marble core, reaching just 30 feet across. After hearing Pitluga's vision of the sculpture representing an ancient observatory and a spiral galaxy, the city, which owns the sculpture through the Department of Cultural Affairs, put it on permanent loan to the Adler. The artists, flown from their home in Sao Paulo for the dedication, said they could not have been more pleased.

"There are many ways to put this together," Milan said. Besides the four-piece marble core, 55 pieces are marble of varying hues of red, white, black, yellow and brown. She named the sculpture "America's Courtyard."

"The idea was the integration of the nations of the Americas orientated by matter," Milan said. "I liked the idea of many colors of stone to represent the many races, ethnicities, religions and cultural beliefs of mankind, showing there are many ways of living together."

A slab of the bench-sized stone is quarried from volcanic basalt.

"That is to remind us," said Milan, "of the formation of the continents and our origins."

When the city commissioned the sculpture, it paid Milan and Perez $30,000 to have the stone shipped to Chicago and another $5,000 to have it installed. The stone came from quarries throughout Brazil and was shaped and polished there.

Milan and Perez brought the sculpture as a temporary exhibit, but when it was disassembled to make way for Millennium Park, they offered it--at no extra charge--as a permanent gift to the city's public art program.

"Denise and Ary really did this as a labor of love," said Michael Lash, the city's director of public art. "As public art linked to an institution like the Adler, it is fantastic, because it folds in human history, geography, geology and the cosmos, and it can even be used physically as an outdoor classroom."